The Americas brokerage arm for UBS expects its average advisor to become a $1 million producer faster than the Zurich-listed wealth management and banking firm previously predicted, a senior executive has said.

Robert Mulholland, head of the UBS Wealth Management Americas advisors group, was quoted by Reuters saying in an interview that he expects advisors will have an average annualised production of $1 million by 2014, compared to an earlier expectation of 2015.

Mulholland was quoted saying that he felt comfortable making that prediction due, in part, to the strength of net new money flowing into the unit and increased efficiencies that are giving advisors more time to focus on their clients. In the first quarter, UBS brought in $8.4 billion in net new money.

UBS had revenue per advisor of $855,000 at the end of the first quarter, up 16 per cent from a year earlier. That production level ranks it second behind Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch.

The figures suggest that UBS in the Americas region is recovering from a run of difficulties: a bruising tax row with the US Internal Revenue Service, and high sub-prime mortgage losses sustained via UBS’s investment bank.

On the recruiting front for the wealth group, Mulholland said the unit is "pretty much on track" to hit its goal of adding 350 to 400 new advisors to its headcount this year, the report said. The brokerage had about 6,800 advisors at the end of the first quarter.